Mission couple

HE IS from Belfast, Ireland. She is from New Jersey, U.S. They met in London one day, 50 years ago. The next day, they found themselves travelling by the same ship bound for India. Bill Scott and Joyce Yost arrived in India on October 28, 1950. Two years later, they were married. Recently a function was organised in Chennai to celebrate the golden jubilee of the couple's multifarious services to India.

Fifty years of service is long enough, and when it is in the life of a couple, maybe we can call it a century. In the beginning, the couple worked in a small school with 30 children, in Peddapalli village in Andhra Pradesh, Mrs. Scott as the principal and Dr.Scott as the business manager.

The two of them were proficient in Telugu within a year of their arrival in India and started interacting closely with the locals. In fact, they chose not to stay within the precincts of the mission compound, but instead preferred to live in a small rented house similar to the one the other teachers lived in. The biographer, Donald G. Barnhouse Jr. notes of the house, "Every room, every ceiling in every room leaked. Snakes were often found in the rafters and backyard, Scott was twice stung by scorpions."

The happy couple did not let anything get them down. They improved the school and secured Government recognition after nine years of hard work. It became a fully recognised Telugu medium school, and later an English medium school was started.

Today, it has become a junior college and there are about 1,300 students who study there.

Later, the couple served in the CSI Mission Hospital at Karimnagar. As Joyce had studied medical technology, she did the twin jobs of lab technician and supervisor in the early Sixties. Then they opened a reading room. Soon with Benjamin Krupanidhi who came in as a salesman, the twosome began Glad Tidings Distribution. That was the first step in their literature work.

In 1971, the director of the U.S.-based World Home Bible League, came to India and after seeing the Scotts' work, requested Dr. Scott to become their director for India.

The Scotts moved to Chennai in 1975 and established the India Bible Literature (IBL) which offered them the facility of printing and distributing God's Word and planning literacy programmes. The former medical superintendent of Kuglar Hospital, Guntur, Dr. Sarala Elisha says, "Under their leadership, IBL distributes "Our Daily Bread", a spiritual daily devotional brought out in English and eight regional languages, which is a great source of blessing to many." To most Christians, ODB has become an integral part of their lives.

Mrs. Scott who mingled with the rural people of Andhra Pradesh for 25 years, felt the need to educate them and thus began the Literacy India Trust (LIT) in 1984. The LIT programme was considered unique by Dr.Malcolm Adiseshaiah of UNESCO because the thrust was not on the quantitative results, but more on the qualitative aspects. The literacy primers are graded books that have been scientifically prepared and supplied in 16 major languages including English.

The Literacy Trust conducts programmes in 18 States of India and in neighbouring Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan.

LIT reaches out to five lakh people of India directly; it has trained 20,000 grassroot level animators to work in villages. Addanki J.Wesley, principal of A.K.College of Education, Ongole, says, "Mrs. Scott has broken more records on the national level than any other national adult literacy worker."

Then came the partnerships in ministry with the churches in India and foreign tie-ups in Ireland and the U.S. The Scotts have refused a number of lucrative partnerships. The Scotts were blessed with a son, Terry and have adopted three Indian children - Elizabeth, Shanti and Jyoti, all three of whom are now settled in the U.S.

All the good work sits lightly on their shoulders. As Dr. Scott sums it up: "It (IBL) was not a programme which was started with large funding, but a calling of God to move in faith as He supplied the needs. As for the golden jubilee, it is not a celebration of what anyone has done for God. It is a celebration of God's ministries through people and an organisation. So now we boldly proclaim "To God be the glory, great things He has done."

SELINE AUGUSTINE

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